Suffering Is Not Wasted

Attitudes Shaped by Grace | Day 25

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5, NIV)

Good morning, friends in Christ. Somewhere behind you, or maybe right in front of you, there is a hard season you never would have chosen. At some point you have probably asked what it was for. Keep that question close this morning, because God has an answer for it.

Most of us have heard the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It sounds brave, and people usually mean well when they say it. But the saying gives the credit to the wrong thing. Pain by itself produces nothing. We all know people who came out of hardship bitter instead of better, closed off instead of opened up, afraid instead of steady. Suffering is not a teacher. It is a setting. What happens in that setting depends entirely on who is with us there.

Paul knew that, which is why his words are so different from the slogan. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” He does not say we grit our teeth through our sufferings. He says we glory in them. That is not a man pretending the pain is small. It is a man who has learned what God does in the middle of it.

Not Stronger, But Closer

The first thing God does with our suffering is not to toughen us up. It is to come near. “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18, NIV) Notice who he is close to. Not the ones who are holding it together. Not the ones who have found the silver lining. The brokenhearted. The crushed. The psalm does not say God waits at a distance until we have pulled ourselves together and then rewards us with his presence. He is closest exactly when we have the least to show for ourselves.

We have not always believed that. Under pressure, our own hearts tend to read suffering as evidence that God has stepped back, or we clench our jaw and try to come through it on our own strength, as though nearness to God were reserved for people whose lives are in order. Both of those reveal the same thing, that we have trusted our circumstances to tell us where God is more than we have trusted his Word.

His Word tells us something far better. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15, NIV) Jesus did not observe human suffering from a safe distance. He was tired. He wept at a tomb. He was betrayed by a friend, abandoned by the rest, and in a garden the night before he died his sweat fell to the ground like drops of blood. When we bring him our worst day, we are not explaining something foreign to him. He has been there, and he came through it without a single sin, which is the very thing that qualified him to stand in our place. The one who is close to the crushed in spirit was himself crushed for our sins, so that we would never be crushed by them.

What the Spirit Builds There

Only after that nearness is settled does Paul’s chain make sense. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. This is not a self-improvement program that the hardship runs on its own. It is the Holy Spirit’s work, and he does it through the Word we keep reading when the lights are low. Perseverance is simply the Spirit keeping us walking when we would rather sit down. Character is what that walking has proven in us over time. And hope is where it all lands, because “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” The hope at the end of the chain is not optimism about tomorrow. It is confidence in a love that was already poured out before the trouble began.

That is why Paul can say what sounds impossible: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NIV) Paul was beaten, imprisoned, and shipwrecked. He does not call those troubles light because they were small. He calls them light because he set them on the scale next to eternity, and eternity outweighed them. Fixing our eyes on the unseen is not denial. It is seeing the whole picture.

And here is what makes the hard season worth something beyond ourselves. The perseverance the Spirit works in us does not stay in us. The patience we received when we were waiting becomes patience for the next person who is waiting. The steadiness that held us becomes something a brother or sister in Christ can lean on. God is not only shaping us for our own sake. He is building in us what the body of Christ will need from us later. Nothing he builds in the dark is meant to be hidden there.

So when we ask what that hard season was for, the answer begins at a cross. Jesus Christ suffered, and his suffering was not wasted. It paid for the sins of the whole world, every one of ours included, and purchased a peace with God that no trouble can revoke. Then he rose from the dead, which is why our suffering cannot be wasted either. The Savior who was crushed for us and rose again is close to us this morning, and he is at work in every one of us who belongs to him.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for coming near when I had nothing to offer you but a broken heart. Thank you for walking through grief, weariness, and betrayal as a man, without sin, so that you could stand in my place and carry what I could never carry. When I am tempted to read my troubles as a sign that you have stepped away, bring me back to your Word, where you promise to be close to the crushed in spirit.

Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who turns my hardest days into perseverance, character, and hope. Fix my eyes on what is eternal when what I can see feels like all there is. Use what you are building in me for someone else who is hurting, and let none of it be wasted. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Thank you for reading this morning. Tomorrow’s devotion picks up a question that follows naturally from this one, about which direction our sorrow faces when it is at its heaviest. Until then, go into this day knowing that the Lord is close.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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